Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr.

by Ron Chernow

one farmer turned down an offer of a one-quarter royalty and stubbornly held out for a one-eighth share.

(The Pennsylvania barrel, equal to forty-two gallons, remains the industry standard to this day.)

is very important to remember what other people tell you, not so much what you yourself already know.”22

Rockefeller wanted to be surrounded by trustworthy people who could inspire confidence in customers and bankers alike. He drew a characteristic conclusion: The weak, immoral man was also destined to be a poor businessman.

Even as a young man, Rockefeller was extremely composed in a crisis.

Having emerged as his own boss, he would never again feel his advancement blocked by shortsighted, mediocre men.

“gentle and lovely, but resolute with indomitable will,”

was a stickler for the truth in presenting facts, never fudged or equivocated in discussing problems, and promptly repaid loans.

Flagler’s dictum that a friendship founded on business was superior to a business founded on friendship,

I trained myself in the school of self-control and self-denial. It was hard on [me], but I would rather be my own tyrant than have some one else tyrannize me.”46

Nevertheless, by the end of the Civil War, a widespread belief had begun to take hold that railroads were common carriers and should shun favoritism.

Eg net neutrality

To borrow a line from Flaubert, to be fiercely revolutionary in business, he needed to be utterly conventional at home.

He worked at a more leisurely pace than many other executives, napping daily after lunch and often dozing in a lounge chair after dinner. To

They earned pocket money by performing chores and received two cents for killing flies, ten cents for sharpening pencils, five cents per hour for practicing their musical instruments, and a dollar for repairing vases. They were given two cents per day for abstaining from candy and a dime bonus for each consecutive day of abstinence.

Cettie turned Sunday into a day for serious reflection, asking the children to reflect upon such weighty maxims as “He who conquers self is the greatest victor”

Religion validated his business misdeeds no less than his charitable bequests, buttressing his strongest impulses.

“The Standard was an angel of mercy, reaching down from the sky, and saying, ‘Get into the ark. Put in your old junk. We’ll take all the risks!’ ”96 He referred to Standard Oil as “the Moses who delivered them [the refiners] from their folly which had wrought such havoc in their fortunes.”97

In a state of ungoverned competition, selfish individuals tried to maximize their profits and thereby impoverished the entire industry.

What the American economy needed instead were new cooperative forms (trusts, pools, monopolies) that would restrain grasping individuals for the general good.

“one of the most experienced, self-contained, and self-controlled men in business.”

moguls prided themselves on their embonpoint,

In late 1883, Rockefeller’s life assumed a marginally higher profile when he moved to New York.

Only later did Dr. Strong realize that his own rigidly doctrinaire attitudes about religion had helped to drive Charles from the church.

This so mortified Rockefeller’s sense of thrift that he borrowed back the $100,000 and paid the society 6 percent. “I can’t endure to see that money idle,”

Rockefeller was especially struck by the broadly systematic nature of Carnegie’s library program, which would bring some twenty-eight hundred public libraries into existence worldwide.

To Rockefeller, the least imaginative use of money was to give it to people outright instead of delving into the causes of human misery.

What really disturbed him was not so much making money but spending it.

“A university that is properly operated always has a deficit.”

When President Cleveland sent troops to Chicago, Debs was jailed, and seven strikers were gunned down.

So in 1897—the year his son graduated from Brown—Rockefeller walked away from the empire that had consumed his energies for more than thirty years, and during the next fifteen years he scarcely appeared at 26 Broadway.

Too entrenched to be ruffled by such journalistic pinpricks, Senator Aldrich stuck by his policy of “Deny nothing, explain nothing.”

On his son’s twenty-first birthday, Senior sent him twenty-one dollars, along with a tender note. “We are grateful beyond measure for your promise and for the confidence your life inspires in us, not only, but in all your friends and acquaintances and this is of more value than all earthly possessions.”

“His usual attitude towards all men was one of deep reserve, concealed beneath commonplaces and humorous anecdotes. He had the art with friends and guests of chatting freely, of calling out others, but of revealing little or nothing of his own innermost thoughts.”

Rockefeller never offered blame or praise and revealed his opinion of employees only by adding or subtracting to their duties.

“if you suppose I have not thought about the matter you are mistaken. I have made some experiments. And nearly always the result is the same—along about the ninth hole out comes some proposition, charitable or financial!”18

When accumulating a position, he bought stocks each time they declined an eighth of a point; when unwinding a position, he sold each time the stock rose an eighth of a point

If the descendants of William Rockefeller were identified with National City, the progeny of John D. were always associated with Chase.

Fond of luxury, Morgan inhabited the world of the ultrarich, with their gargantuan cigars, fine port, and oversized steam yachts.

“Mr. Morgan, I think there must be some mistake. I did not come here to sell. I understood you wished to buy.”

Control of self wins the battle, for it means control of others.”

Gates was always mystified by Morgan’s success. “He seems to be a man incapable of calm and reasoning reflection; the victim of a succession of unreasoning impulses.”113

Food was fuel for Rockefeller, not a source of sensual pleasure.

Rockefeller had tried to create that most elusive thing, a self-perpetuating puritanism,

Edith decided that the Rockefellers were descended from the noble La Rochefoucaulds,

“The virtue of forgetting, which is one of the most valuable virtues that a monopolist can have under cross-examination, is possessed by Mr. Rockefeller in its highest degree.”

It might not be too much of an exaggeration to say that the antitrust cases brought against the trust in the early 1900s were not just belated but were fast becoming superfluous.

the 1890s, the entire Justice Department staff in Washington had only eighteen lawyers.

“Able methodical people grow on every bush but genius comes once in a generation and if you ever get in its vicinity thank the Lord & stick,” Tarbell once told a colleague

“Gentlemen, we must not be entangled in controversies. If she is right we will not gain anything by answering, and if she is wrong time will vindicate us.”

As he carefully plotted his moves in order to live to one hundred, Rockefeller placed great store in following the same daily schedule down to the second.